Monday, July 30, 2012

They just want it all

by digby

We keep hearing that the "job creators" will pick up stakes and move elsewhere if they are forced to pay even a penny more in taxes. In fact, they might move if we don't lower their taxes. And then where will we be?

The question is, where do they propose to go?

Here's where they are now:

According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are 66,000 taxpayers who individually control $20 million or more in assets, and all these people put together are worth $4 trillion—more than the net worth of 70 percent of the US population.

The investment bank Credit Suisse, for its part, classifies "ultra high net worth individuals" as people with at least $50 million in assets—and according to the bank's 2011 Global Wealth Databook, more of these UNHWIs live in the United States than anywhere else in the world (see chart above).

So perhaps America has lots of multimillionaires because it's a prosperous country? That's certainly a factor—but not the only one. Compared to the superrich in the six other countries with the most multimillionaires, American tycoons grab a disproportionately large share of the economic pie:

Guess what the tax rates are?

I suppose these fabulously wealthy plutocrats and Masters of the Universe could all buy an island and live there without paying any taxes. But they aren't going to find a better deal in a first world country than the US.

These people are greedy bastards and they just think they deserve it all. Their tax rates are not onerous and they have more money than they can possibly spend. They would be "creating jobs" tomorrow is there was a point in it. The problem is that nobody else has any money so there's no demand. And they really don't care.